


Hard Run

by battle_cat



Series: Together [56]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Biting, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Having sex instead of having feelings, Max on top, Rough Sex, Scratching, Smut, Wasteland coping mechanisms, smangst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 13:03:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8668612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: Maybe one of these days, there will come a time when she’ll let him be soft and sweet to her when she’s hurting inside. But it’s not tonight.





	

The new rig’s overworked engine is still smoking when Furiosa swings out of the cab, marching across the sunset-lit garage with murder in her eyes.

It had been a bad run, the worst Buzzard attack they’d faced in months, the new crew still far too inexperienced and uncoordinated. There had been casualties.

Max hangs back in the passenger seat as Furiosa storms away, replacing weapons in their proper spots after the chaos of the fight while subtly keeping an eye on her. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ace slide down from his perch atop the rig and half-busy himself with some trivial task as well.

“If you _ever_ —” Furiosa’s roar is directed at the outrider car coming into view on the clattering lift, its rear window shattered and fender smashed. “—disobey a direct order again you are off my crew!”

“Boss…” The driver quails as he steps out of the car. He’s barely more than a teenager, young and green, and Furiosa is several inches taller than him. Her metal hand is clenched into a fist.

“You do _not_ break formation and you do _not_ turn around for salvage,” she snarls. For all her fearsome reputation, Max can’t remember her ever yelling at her crew. But even he knows the driver had been reckless, swerving back toward the Buzzard cars when they should have all kept moving.

“‘S…‘s not salvage.” The lancer, who looks hardly a day older, is quiet but his jaw is set. “‘S our mate. Trained us up ‘n all.”

A few crewmates from the top of the rig have ventured closer. They ease the lanky body out of the back seat of the car, the dead boy’s bare torso painted with blood from a dozen rusty punctures, the grisly end result of impact with a Buzzard car. At least a spike through the throat had ended things quickly.

“Weren’t just gonna leave him for Buzzard food,” the driver stammers. “Least this way…he can do somethin’ shine. Make the gardens grow.”

Furiosa’s posture hasn’t relaxed an inch, but her eyes flick to the body on the garage floor. “You left our flank open. You endangered your crewmates.” She’s not yelling now, her voice low and menacing instead.

The driver visibly flinches. “‘M sorry, Boss.” He’s hunched over, as if expecting a blow. But Furiosa is once more looking at the dead War Boy on the floor.

“Get him out of here,” she says abruptly, and turns away.

Max doesn’t notice Ace has stepped up on the runner board by the window until the old War Boy mutters: “He was one of her crew.” For a moment Max is confused—aren’t they all crew?—and then the meaning hits him. The War Boy had been part of her _original_ crew. Her War Rig crew.

Four of them had stumbled back to the Citadel after the sandstorm cleared: gruff old survivor Ace, and three others whose names Max could never keep straight. And now there was one less of them, twice sacrificed on one of Furiosa’s runs.

Furiosa is back at the rig, suddenly, but she doesn’t even meet Max’s gaze. All she does is reach in the window and grab her rifle from between the seats, then she’s marching out of the garage with her jaw clenched.

He stumbles out the cab and follows her.

 

She walks faster than he can keep up with, striding through the Citadel’s warren of passages toward her room. She doesn’t give him so much as a backward glance. But she doesn’t bar the door behind her to shut him out.

When he reaches her room she’s standing with her back to the door, her prosthetic unstrapped and tossed on the workbench, grinding a fist into the stone surface of the table.

He closes and bars the door carefully, lights a lamp against the rapidly descending twilight.

“Hey,” he tries. He reads the crackling tension in the line of her shoulders from across the room. When he gets closer he can see that her teeth are gritted and her eyes squeezed shut, her knuckles white against the stone.

“Hey,” he says again when he’s close enough to touch her. “Easier, hmm, if you let it out.”

“Don’t _you_ talk to me about _feelings,_ ” she snarls through clenched teeth, and, well…fair enough.

“No talking then.” She is practically vibrating with tension, shaking like an engine at its redline, and all he can think about is how to soothe her. He reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder.

Her reaction is instant, jerking out of his grasp, and he sees the fight coiled in her muscles a split second before she spins. He ducks under her right hook on pure reflex, but he’s not watching her left side and— _WHAM_. He stumbles back, ears ringing and jaw radiating pain, and she just growls and launches at him.

This isn’t sparring; it’s wild and messy and raw. He doesn’t want to fight her like this, not when she’s feral enough to trigger his own instincts. He blocks and blocks and tries to get her in some kind of hold, finally manages to let her momentum spin her around and clamp his arms around her tight from behind. It makes her howl with fury. He dodges the headbutt he knows is coming but gets two eye-watering kicks in the shin before he’s able to pin her against the wall, the only way he’s ever been able to, between the full weight of his body and a solid surface.

It’s over as quickly as it began, both of them panting hard, his arms still wrapped tight around her. He can’t work out whether she got him with her elbow or her stump, but his jaw is pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

“We done with that?” he says when he can breathe enough to speak. After a moment her head tips forward against the stone and she huffs out a hard breath.

He spins her around to face him, so he can at least read her face even though she doesn’t want to look him in the eye. His grip is still firm on her right wrist, pulled up between their chests, but he risks releasing her left elbow to brush his fingers against her cheek.

“Don’t.” She squeezes her eyes shut as if the touch burns. “Don’t be gentle with me.”

She’s hunched in on herself, but she doesn’t flinch away when he rests his forehead against hers. “What do you need?” he asks, although…he’s pretty sure he already knows.

“Just.” A ragged breath. “Make me feel something other than this.”

“Okay,” he says. Her eyes are still closed, a sheen of sweat on her collarbone from their brief fight. “Okay.”

He ducks his head down and kisses her shoulder, firm and hot and wet, and then he bites down. The moan she makes is tinged with something like relief. When he lets up to nuzzle against her neck her cheek presses against his temple. “‘S what you want?” he murmurs. Feels her nod, press closer to him.

“Please,” she breathes. And it doesn’t make his jaw hurt any more than it already does, so he leans down and bites her again, gets another low animal noise out of her. He can already feel her shoulders dropping, her weight sagging against the stone.

Maybe one of these days, there will come a time when she’ll let him be soft and sweet to her when she’s hurting inside. But it’s not tonight.

“Like you had me before,” she mutters, twitching her shoulders to turn away from him. He spins her around again—in another life they might have been dancing—and wraps an arm tight around her, gripping her shoulder and pinning her arm against her chest while he sucks and bites a line of marks on her skin.

“More,” she urges. Her voice is raw and needy.

His fingers are clean enough that he feels safe sliding a hand under her shirt and running his nails down her back, slow and harder than she’s used to. She arches and writhes, rocking back against him. “Ahh—yes. Do that again.” He digs his nails hard into her shoulder and she whines.

Her shirt is in the way and so he peels it up, leaving it tangled around her forearms where she’s leaned forward to brace herself against the wall. For a split second the moment catches in his throat: the bare expanse of her skin, her slightly bent neck with the brand exposed, the heady vulnerability of her turning her back to him, trusting him to hurt her in only the right way.

He kisses the nape of her neck, and then he drags his nails down her back as hard as he dares without drawing blood. He scratches until she’s whimpering. Her ass is grinding against his crotch now, an animal rhythm he thinks she’s only half in control of. His cock is responding and he knows she can feel it, thinks it’s just egging her on. Her nipples are hard and tight when he reaches forward to pinch them.

“Do you want to be fucked now?” He breathes it in her ear because he knows it will make her twitch, and it does. She nods breathlessly. His hands are already undoing her belt. He tugs her leathers down, and then his own, and _fuck_ it feels good to press up against her, his cock against the hot flesh of her ass as he nips and sucks at her throat and runs his nails over her stomach, her thighs, not hard enough to leave marks but enough to make her shiver. At some point he pauses to tug his shirt off to feel more of her bare skin against his. He’s sweaty and he wonders if it stings the scratches on her back, if she likes it that way.

In this state he could push her up against the wall and thrust into her right here, and he doesn’t think she would care if he scraped her raw against the stone. The bed seems a more prudent option.

When he guides her that way she goes down on her knees and elbows on the mattress, her ass in the air and her pink pussy exposed. She is very wet. He spares a moment to tug off her boots and leathers so he can nudge her legs wider. “Like this?” He leans over her, trying to read what he can of her face where it’s pressed against the sheets.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “Hard.”

She is more than ready for him when he slides in, hot and desperately wet, and she moans when he thrusts fast and hard, her hand fisted into the sheets. For a blurry interval of time there’s nothing but slapping flesh and the wanton noises she’s burying her face against the mattress to muffle, his hands digging into the sweaty crease between her thighs and hips, and then he gets his fingers on her clit, steady and insistent, and she wails and comes with a long, hard clench. He tries to concentrate on fucking her through it, but suddenly he’s coming too, leaning over her with a helpless grunt, overwhelmed.

He stays bent over for a moment, both of them heaving and soaked with sweat. He can feel her legs shaking against his, and gradually he realizes his knee is throbbing and his jaw is a steady ache. When he eases out of her she sinks down to lie flat and still on the bed. 

He sits down carefully next to her, wincing when he stretches his legs and his knee pops. His trousers are still tangled around his knees, and he works them off along with his boots and tosses the lot onto the floor by the edge of the mattress. 

There are two raw scrapes on his right shin where she kicked him during the fight. The scratches on her back are bright red. She keeps her face turned away from him.

When he feels like he can stand up he retrieves the washing bowl and cloth from the ledge.

He dabs a little disinfectant on a corner of the cloth. “I know,” he mutters when she flinches as he wipes her back. “Just in case.” He wasn’t willing to make her bleed, but the scratches will definitely still be there in the morning.

He rolls her over enough to wipe the mess of drying come from between her legs, cleans himself off with what’s left of the cloth. He extinguishes the lamp then lies back on the mattress behind her in the dark.

She is very still, but her usual boneless post-coital warmth seems missing. He wishes he could see her face. He scoots close, not pressed all the way up against her but close enough to stroke her arm. A single jagged, hitching breath escapes her.

This would probably be a good moment, a healthy moment, to cry. But she doesn’t.

After a few moments of lying there in the dark she slides out of bed and he hears her pad over to the curtained-off alcove to piss. When she comes back it’s too dark to see her expression clearly, but she curls up around him and tucks her face against his shoulder. He arranges an arm carefully over her in a way he thinks won’t press on anything that hurts.

 

By morning she’s rolled back away from him. The red lines of scratches on her back are not as livid, but the bite marks have bruised into a forest of purple-red across her shoulders.

He puts a gentle hand on her hip and she wakes with a soft hum. He slides closer and kisses the back of her neck.

“I, um…I left a lot of marks.” In the daylight it all seems more transgressive somehow.

“It’s okay. I wanted it.”

He thinks he understands, even if it’s not what he craves. Wanting sensation to scour away whatever is in your head—that he knows. And physical pain is familiar, approachable, the pathways of endorphins and adrenaline etched out over a thousand fights like water cuts into a rock. It is known territory. It has an end point.

She rolls over to face him. “Thank you,” she mutters, her gaze lowered. He brushes a kiss against her forehead.

She touches his jaw, where there must be a bruise by now. “I’m sorry I hit you.” She shakes her head, a sudden twitch of frustration. “Sorry. Dunno…what’s wrong with me…”

He makes what he hopes is a soothing noise and pulls her close, nudging her up to rest her head on his shoulder, his fingers rubbing slow circles over her hair. It’s still early; the Citadel won’t miss them for a little while yet.

“Does it hurt, when you punch with your stump?” he asks after a stretch of silence.

“Fucking kills,” she mumbles against his shoulder. “But they never see it coming.”

 

They stay in bed as long as they dare. When Furiosa finally, reluctantly prods them up they’re both grumbling and stiff, Max limping between a sore knee and an angry bruise on his shin, Furiosa wincing when she reaches down to retrieve her shirt from the floor.

They help each other into clothes. “Your arm?” Max asks when she swings the pauldron gingerly over her shoulder. The high back of her top covers the red marks, but he’s suddenly cringing at the thought of belts and straps rubbing against her back all day. Why hadn’t he thought about that last night?

She shrugs. “Had worse.” She cinches the belts tight with only the slightest wince.

She examines the line of bruises on her shoulders in the shard of mirror hanging on the wall. She no longer bothers to hide a stray hickey to two, but…this is more than that.

After a moment’s consideration he takes his jacket off the hook by the door and holds it out for her. “For now.” 

He thinks he sees a shadow of a smile as he helps her carefully slide the metal, then her flesh arm into it. She is leaner than he is, but broad-shouldered and tall, and the jacket is boxy enough that it doesn’t restrict the mechanisms of her arm. It covers everything seamlessly. Only they will know.


End file.
